Culture: The Stottie Cake

Traditionalists and historians will argue over whether the stottie cake is a Northumbrian or Tyneside invention, but one thing's for sure - it has graced many a Northumbrian packed lunch.

The Stottie cake (or stotty) is a type of bread produced in the North East of England. It is a thick, flat, round loaf (usually about 30 cm in diameter by 8 cm deep). A proper stottie is a meal in its own right.

Stotties tend to be eaten split and filled. Common fillings include ham and pease pudding, but also bacon, egg and sausage. The heavy texture of the bread gives it its name (to 'stott' is Geordie dialect meaning 'to bounce'), and also makes it difficult for many people to eat one whole in one sitting, therefore most bakeries provide them halved or even quartered.

Elsewhere in the world, bread similar to the Stottie is known as Oven Bottom Bread.

Article adapted from the Wikipedia online encyclopedia.

Culture: The Lindisfarne Gospels

The Lindisfarne Gospels.

The Lindisfarne Gospels is an illuminated Latin manuscript of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The manuscript was produced on Lindisfarne in Northumbria in the late 7th century or early 8th century, and is generally regarded as the finest example of the kingdom's unique style of religious art, a style that combined Anglo-Saxon and Celtic themes, what is now called Hiberno-Saxon art.

The Lindisfarne Gospels are presumed to be the work of a monk named Eadfrith, who became Bishop of Lindisfarne in 698 and died in 721. Current scholarship indicates a date around 715, and it is believed they were produced in honour of St. Cuthbert. The Gospels are richly illustrated in the insular style, and were originally encased in a fine leather binding covered with jewels and metals made by Billfrith the Anchorite in the 8th century. During the Viking raids on Lindisfarne, however, this cover was lost, and a replacement made in 1852. The text is written in insular script.

In the 10th century an Old English translation of the Gospels was made: a word-for-word gloss inserted between the lines of the Latin text by Aldred, Provost of Chester-le-Street. This is the first translation of the Gospels into the English language.

The Gospels were taken from Durham Cathedral during the dissolution of the monasteries, ordered by Henry VIII, and were acquired in the early 17th century by Sir Robert Cotton from Robert Bowyer, Clerk of the Parliaments. Cotton's library came to the British Museum in the 18th century, and from there to the British Library in London.

A campaign exists to have the gospels brought back to Durham Cathedral in the North East of England, a move vigorously opposed by the British Library. A modern facsimile copy of the Gospels is now housed in the Cathedral Treasury at Durham, which can be seen by visitors.

Article adapted from the Wikipedia online encyclopedia.

Alnmouth

Church Hill, seperated from the
village by the great storm of 1806.

Alnmouth is a small fishing and tourist village on the north Northumberland coast. It's about 4 miles south east of the town of Alnwick and lies at the mouth of the River Aln.

The village has been an important trading port in Northumberland's past, mainly involved in the export of grain, and smuggling. The port declined after the river changed course in 1806. This incident also resulted in the original church being cut off from the rest of the village.

The village was in 1860 selected as one of fourteen weather stations, and equipped with barometer by the Duke of Northumberland acting as president of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. The barometer and a chart of recent readings was kept on public display, to seek to provide fishermen with indications of likely weather patterns so as to assist in diminishing losses at sea. The barometer remains on display, in the window of a cottage facing on the the main street, to this day.

Today, Alnmouth is a popular tourist resort, served by Alnmouth railway station which is situated in Bilton, a mile outside Alnmouth. The narrow streets are home to candy-coloured houses (just like kid's TV programme Balamory). The village has a good range of pubs and hotels and is the ideal base to tour the rest of the county.

Article adapted from the Wikipedia online encyclopedia.

How to get to Alnmouth:
By road: Take the main A1 trunk road north from Newcastle upon Tyne, to Alnwick. Take the Alnwick exit and follow the road towards Alnwick town centre. From the town centre take the A1068 coastal route. Alnmouth is about 4 miles south east of Alnwick.
By rail: The nearest station is Alnmouth.
By bus: Arriva Northumbria service 518 goes from the Haymarket Bus Station in Newcastle via Morpeth to Alnmouth. In the reverse direction, the 518 goes from Alnwick via the coast to Alnmouth. During the summer months the Coastal Clipper service runs between Bamburgh and Amble, via Alnmouth.

Map of area: CLICK HERE

Blyth

Blyth is a nuclear-free zone - perhaps its only redeeming feature.

I'm scraping the barrel once again in my whistle-stop tour of (arguably) England's most beautiful county. This time we're at Blyth - home of not-so-golden beaches, pollution, crime and unemployment. Kind of like Ashington, but slightly less glamorous and easy on the sinuses. On a positive note it does have some 'canny' people (as we say around these parts), innovative technology on Kitty Brewster industrial estate, loads of cheap continental retail outlets (you know the ones) and the wind turbines are making a positive contribution in the fight against global warming. Rumour has it you could once catch fish in the harbour but now you only get supermarket trolleys and burnt-out cars. The local Labour MP is Ronnie 'the Monkey' Campbell - so called because he was too stupid to complete his own time sheets down the pit. Blank out the vision that he is now stalking the corridors of power. He's also not a man to mess with arguing over a kebab (allegedly). As Ronnie would tell you, if he could string a coherent sentence together, despite it's limitations Blyth is still a good place to get a decent bag of chips.

The Earls of Derwentwater owned Blyth and the surrounding land up until 1716, when the third and final Earl was executed after the 1715 Jacobite rising. In 1723, the land was bought by Matthew White and his brother-in-law Richard Ridley, with accumulated fortunes from town-based trades. By 1730, Matthew White extended his landed possessions by purchasing Blagdon, which still remains the seat of his descendants.

The port of Blyth dates from the 12th century, but the modern town of Blyth only developed in the 18th century, with the erection of a quay for the shipment of coal. There were also fourteen salt pans with an annual production of over one thousand tons. The industry closed in 1876 with the destruction of the last saltpan.

Nevertheless, the port continued to prosper. By 1853, the Blyth Harbour and Dock Company was formed, and five years later, the harbour was dredged, allowing a substantial increase in the coal trade: increasing from 250,000 tons of coal being exported in 1855, to 3 million tons by 1900.

Shipbuilding records go back to 1748 but only rose to a formidable level after the beginning of the 20th century, when it developed one of the largest shipbuilding yards on the North East coast with five dry docks and four building slipways. During the First and Second World Wars, the Blyth shipyards built many ships for the Royal Navy including the first aircraft carrier, HMS Ark Royal in 1914. The shipyard was closed in 1967.

The fishing industry also played a significant part in Blyth's development with many people engaged in the salmon and herring industries in the months of August and September.

In 1831 there were 246 inhabited houses combined with a total population of 1,769. By 1931 this had risen to 7,218 inhabited houses with a total population of 31,680.

During the Second World War Blyth Harbour was a submarine base.

Blyth has been seriously affected by the running down of the coalmining and shipbuilding industries but the port of Blyth still remains a major industry in the area with the shipment of paper and pulp from Scandinavia for the newspaper industries of England and Scotland. It is also a dormitory town with substantial new housing estates. There are two trading estates in Blyth, namely Cowpen and Kitty Brewster.

Cambois, just north of Blyth, was the site of a large coal-fired power station. It opened in 1958 and closed in January 2002. The chimneys were demolished on December 7, 2003. Blyth pier (which protects the entrance to the river from the sea) has been home to nine wind turbines since 1992, joined in 2000 by two offshore wind turbines 1km out to sea. At 2MW each, they were when installed the largest in the world.

The town is home to one of England's best-known non-league football clubs, Blyth Spartans.

Article adapted from the Wikipedia online encyclopedia.

How to get to Blyth:
By road from the south: take the main A189 trunk road north from Newcastle. Blyth is about 12 miles north of Newcastle.
By road from the north: Take the main A1 trunk road from Edinburgh and Berwick upon Tweed to Alnwick, about 30 miles south of Berwick. Turn off at Alnwick and take the A1068 coastal route. Just south of Ellington join the A189. Blyth is on the left just after the Ashington turn off. Head for the wind turbines.
By rail: The nearest station is Cramlington.
By bus: Services 42, 43, 101, X1 and EX1 (plus many others) connect Blyth and Newcastle upon Tyne.

Map of area: CLICK HERE